becoming sires.  Similarly, the mares who win races as fillies, are not allowed to waste their strength in being ridden or driven, but are tended under sanatory conditions for the sole purpose of bearing offspring.  It is better economy, in the long-run, to use the best mares as breeders than as workers, the loss through their withdrawal from active service being more than recouped in the next generation through what is gained by their progeny.

The college statutes to which I referred were very recently relaxed at Oxford, and have been just reformed at Cambridge.  I am told that numerous marriages have ensued in consequence, or are ensuing.  In Hereditary Genius I showed that scholastic success runs strongly in families; therefore, in all seriousness, I have no doubt, that the number of Englishmen naturally endowed with high scholastic faculties, will be sensibly increased in future generations by the repeal of these ancient statutes.

The English race has yet to be explored and their now unknown wealth of hereditary gifts recorded, that those who possess such a patrimony should know of it.  The natural impulses of mankind would then be sufficient to ensure that such wealth should no more continue to be neglected than the existence of any other possession suddenly made known to a man.  Aristocracies seldom make alliances out of their order, except to gain wealth.  Is it less to be expected that those who become aware that they are endowed with the power of transmitting valuable hereditary gifts should abstain from squandering their future children’s patrimony by marrying persons of lower natural stamp?  The social consideration that would attach itself to high races would, it may be hoped, partly neutralise a social cause that is now very adverse to the early marriages of the most gifted, namely, the cost of living in cultured and refined society.  A young man with a career before him commonly feels it would be an act of folly to hamper himself by too early a marriage.  The doors of society that are freely open to a bachelor are closed to a married couple with small means, unless they bear patent recommendations such as the public recognition of a natural nobility would give.  The attitude of mind that I should expect to predominate among those who had undeniable claims to rank as members of an exceptionally gifted race, would be akin to that of the modern possessors of ancestral property or hereditary rank.  Such persons feel it a point of honour not to alienate the old place or make misalliances, and they are respected for their honest family pride.  So a man of good race would shrink from spoiling it by a lower marriage, and every one would sympathise with his sentiments.

CONCLUSION.

It remains to sketch in outline the principal conclusions to which we seem to be driven by the results of the various inquiries contained in this volume, and by what we know on allied topics from the works of others.